Fernando Alonso mastered the Indianapolis 500 on his rookie attempt, but the road and street courses of Indycar could pose surprising challenges
All signs are pointing to double Formula 1 world champion Fernando Alonso heading to Indycar for 2019, with the series finally confirming one of motorsport’s worst-kept secrets to Autosport last week. “Mclaren is working to put all the necessary arrangements in place, and we are supporting their efforts,” said Mark Miles, the CEO of Indycar parent company Hulman & Co. “I don’t expect this to be resolved until closer to the end of this year.”
But despite Miles’s suggested timeline, Autosport understands that Mclaren’s Indycar programme may be in place by the end of this month, although the priority is its 2019 Formula 1 line-up, a process helped by Carlos Sainz joining as Alonso’s replacement last week.
Not only is the movement gathering pace off-track, with an affiliation with Andretti Autosport likely, thereby reviving its 2017 Indianapolis 500 partnership, but Alonso is set to drive a 2018-spec Indycar for the first time in the days following the Portland race in September. The test could take place at Barber Motorsports Park in an Andretti-run car.
“I know there is that possibility,” said Alonso. “I don’t know that [2018] car in a normal set-up or on a normal circuit, so it can be a possibility. If I’m not racing in F1 next year, I can prepare a bit deeper – a lot more testing will always be welcome. Last year it was limited time and testing, and I was in the simulator in the morning and on the track [at Indy] in free practice in the afternoons. If I can relax that little bit, and do more testing, I can be better prepared.”
And that extra time will be invaluable. This is a different Indycar for Alonso, and the prospect of a full season only makes his Indy 500 run look all the more alien to what he can expect this time around.
Sebastien Bourdais reckoned Alonso’s Indy 500 debut was “too easy”, and there’s an element of truth to that considering the predictability of the over-downforced manufacturer aerokits that were dropped at the end of 2017, and Andretti/honda’s recent dominance at Indianapolis. Now there’s nowhere to hide. The current Indycar puts a premium on driver talent and set-up expertise, a challenge that Alonso will relish after years bemoaning the lack of competitiveness in F1.
He would do well to lean on his 2017 Indy 500 team-mate Alexander Rossi, who also made the switch from a disappointing F1 season to Indycar, in his case back in ’16, and has taken three seasons to emerge as a frontrunner. “He
[Alonso] has already got a taste of it [Indycar] in training for the 500, and there was a bit of a culture shock,” says Rossi. “He won’t really have a huge problem with adapting to the race cars.”
But Alonso’s undoubted talent is just one facet of making the programme a success, and 2018 has demonstrated the importance of two factors in Indycar: the merits of at least two cars working in perfect harmony to hone set-up, and a strong relationship between drivers and mechanics.
Consider the remarkable consistency this year of Scott Dixon at Chip Ganassi Racing. He’s finished outside the top 10 just twice on his way to a likely fifth title, and it’s hard not to draw the conclusion that downscaling from the overwhelming data of four cars to two helped at the team. That’s a train of thought boosted by Graham Rahal’s struggles in a one-car team until Takuma Sato joined Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, and it makes Mclaren’s plan for two cars sensible, even if high-profile target Dixon opted to remain at Ganassi.
“How you work with your team-mate is very different [in Indycar]; your team-mate is kind of your enemy [in F1] and you’re doing everything
to beat them,” says Rossi. “In Indycar you’re happy to have the help on set-up, and what they’re doing on the track. Obviously, on race day you’re going to treat them like anyone else, but really leading up to that point it’s an open book.”
That relationship extends off track too, with a crew of usually 10 people integral to a team’s performance. James Hinchcliffe was comprehensively outperformed by rookie team-mate Robert Wickens before an Indy 500 bumping led to a staffing shake-up at Schmidt Peterson Motorsports. The result? A first win of 2018 two months later.
Considering Alonso’s reputation for burning bridges and lashing out when a team underperforms – ask Honda how it felt about the infamous “GP2 engine” comment – that’s another hurdle for the ex-f1 man. While Alonso has been described as “one of the lads” in the Toyota World Endurance camp, it’s easy to be a good bloke in an untouchable LMP1 team, but something altogether different in a punishing series in which fine margins decide results.
“The human relationship aspect is much bigger in Indycar than it is in Formula 1,”
Rossi says. “Formula 1 is very much a type of business relationship with your mechanics, the engineers, the people that are on the team, because there’s so many of them. Indycar is smaller, a more personal environment, and the teams feed off who you are as a person and how much effort you’re putting in.”
While Alonso’s Indy 500 experience will help negate some of his inexperience on ovals, Rossi argues that it’s easy to overlook a more surprising challenge for an F1 convert – the wildly different street and road courses, with all the uneven surfaces and lack of run-off to catch out drivers.
“I think that was my biggest surprise,” says Rossi. “I expected to be the best on the road and street courses right from the beginning, just because I grew up on them, and that’s my database. That was probably a bigger learning curve than the ovals in some respects, just because they are very tricky, very different from Europe. There is no run-off on the road, which is good, the layouts are sometimes a little bit strange, the laps are short, so for that you need different skills and the car set-up definitely feels different as well. By no means is it easy to adapt.”
We can hypothesise endlessly about Alonso’s potential merits in Indycar, but there is one aspect that is undoubted: the huge impact of a bona fide superstar heading over to Indycar once again as it battles to return to its pre-cart/irl-split heyday. Early evidence is already apparent, as Indycar is delaying its international TV rights negotiations, knowing that Alonso’s superstardom could launch it into the mainstream once again.